I think I may have expressed this before, but it is really fucking hard to blog when you don’t have internet. And when you’re about to move. So here’s a synopsis of the last couple of blog-less days:

eating

worrying about how little I write these days

eating

swimming

worrying about how little I write these days

learning how to play texas hold’em

eating

playing bananagrams

worrying about how little I write these days

applying bug killer to garden

eating

So, even though I am vaguely trying to convince myself that blogging is a form of writing, it’s still not the kind of writing that I want to do more of. Once this move is over, I am battening down the hatches. I am going to write every day, really. I need to think about the framework for the book manuscript, the relationship between the writer-speaker and myself the writer, the function of the ending and what that ending should be. I need to figure out what’s missing in the chapbook (more wet ghosts? more detached limbs?), and what is up with its form.

I also want to start new things. I love having longer projects, book-length poems to go and go and go forward, but I don’t want to get stuck there. I might have to start limiting myself to one- or two-page poems.

I’ve never made challah before in my life, so this was a surprise. We ended up with two loaves, one of which we ate most of immediately, and another that we made french toast out of this morning. There is still a lot left. I have a feeling I’m going to start showing up on people’s doorsteps with challah.

Before the baking, I also read a ton of BWR submissions and watered the garden, so it was a pretty productive day. Still no sitting-down-to-write, though.

We used Alton Brown’s pad thai recipe, which we’ve done before. We didn’t have tamarind, which didn’t seem to make a difference, though I did end up putting in way more fish sauce than required. Most people don’t like fish sauce, right? I think it’s smelly and delicious.

The house that I mentioned in my first post, my grandmother’s house in Margate, gets rented out over the summers and will most likely be sold this year. I’ve been going there since I was a kid, and it’s sort of the kernel behind my book manuscript [disclaimer: connecting myself with a book manuscript feels very strange and uneasy, like I’m claiming something I have no right to, but I’m forcing myself to do it anyway. It’s good for me].

So the house is usually rented over the summer, but this year they’ve rented it out for a few weeks in the off season, in April and May. Except apparently the people they’ve rented to won’t leave. The property manager went to talk to them, and they told him to get a lawyer and shut the door.

I’ve been writing about a beach house with bad landlord/tenant relations for several years now. I mean, the landlord may or may not be a ghost, and the tenant may or may not exist, but still. It feels reflective. And maybe this will spur some new work?

But really–those people had better leave. I am offended by their actions. Out!